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Thursday, November 20, 2003Steve Rucker, a registered nurse at the National Institutes of Health, broke with his lunchtime routine yesterday, forgoing his usual visit to the cafeteria and opting instead to roll up his sleeve for a shot filled with the biological essence of Ebola -- one of the world's deadliest and goriest diseases. Surrounded by a gaggle of doctors and scientists, Rucker stepped into medical history at 12:10 p.m., becoming the first person ever injected with an experimental vaccine designed to protect against Ebola, the disease that was highlighted in the real-life thriller "The Hot Zone" and that continues to take a bloody toll in Africa. "I've had better lunches," Rucker quipped as the shot's 100 trillion strands of synthetic DNA began to make their way into the cells in his arm. Rucker is a pioneer in a high-tech effort to beat Ebola. If the vaccine works in people as it has in monkeys, it could fell one of the world's most horrid infectious scourges. Alas, health officials say, despite weeks of advertisements and other pleas, only two people have volunteered to be part of the effort. "People freak out about Ebola," said Margaret McCluskey, the director of nursing at the NIH's vaccine research center, where the new vaccine -- the first for Ebola -- awaits 25 more people to participate in initial safety tests. The other volunteer is the gardener in one of the researchers' neighborhood. The gardener and the nurse deserve to be congratulated, taking the risk of a vaccine which confers no conceivable benefit to themselves. Altruism lives. The making of the vaccine itself is a fascinating biotech story: With nearly atomic precision, researchers at Vical, a biotechnology company in San Diego, made the strands to mimic those found in the Ebola virus -- but with key components removed, including the part that triggers illness and the part that might allow the DNA to recombine with the DNA of some other virus to make a new and potentially disease-causing bug. ....The DNA enters subcutaneous skin cells, which use it to make Ebola proteins. Immune-system cells attack those proteins and then are primed forever to fight a real Ebola infection even more vigorously. The long-term plan is to follow the DNA shot with a booster made of an adenovirus engineered to contain Ebola DNA. In a test of four monkeys given that one-two punch, all four were unfazed by an Ebola attack, while four monkeys given dummy shots all died, said virologist Anthony Sanchez of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which helped develop the vaccine. posted by Sydney on 11/20/2003 08:08:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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